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A bit about the 'mum friend dating scene'

For me having a baby felt like being in a serious accident (no offense to those of you who have actually been in a serious accident). It was like I woke up from a coma and there was this baby.

Everyone who loved me came to visit in awe of this tiny munchkin and I just remember thinking ‘yeh, yeh the baby’s pretty awesome…BUT WHAT ABOUT ME?!’ How could they not see what I had just been through?

My body has just sustained the most painful injury known to woman, I haven’t slept in 3 days (more like 9 months), a room full of strangers just saw me leg spread in the nud, this tiny alien is gnawing on my boob and what you find amazing in all of this is how tiny his goddamn fingers are?

And the loneliness stemmed from there.

From that moment I ventured in to a parallel universe. A Universe where all of what I knew still existed but I was unable to participate. And all that was new was foreign.

"So I feed him every 2-3 hours? How long does a feed take? An hour? An hour from the start of the last feed? So what do I do when I’m not feeding? Oh, I’m always feeding."

What do you mean ‘how do I plan to settle my baby’? What is Settling? Oh, get him to sleep? Don’t babies just sleep? THEY DON’T?! (They don’t)."

I was determined to show my existing friends that I was still me.

The reality is that I am still me – but with a different timetable and different priorities.

"I can’t meet you for dinner at 7 tonight because I’m breastfeeding and that’s when I put baby to bed.

What you can do is come over at 3pm tomorrow because that’s when baby is really hard work and I could really do with some help and some company. But that’s when you’re working."

It occurred to me very early on that I needed a new network.

I needed to make new mum friends.

Gosh I used to be so good at networking in the old world! But all of the sudden I found myself in this new skin (stretchy stuff too!) and I was finding it hard enough to string a sentence together let alone, hang on what was I saying…..oh sorry lost my train of thought.

That was me in the early days. I was hardly exuding the confidence and charisma I once did that helped me to network in the old corporate and social fields. I was completely depending on the new parents group set up by my maternal and child health nurse. But with an October baby, the group wouldn’t start until January and I thought I might go insane by then.

I was told there would be 4 mums in my new parents group. I would like to know what the chances are that those 4 mums would have anything in common with me other than having a baby and living close by?

So I found myself on the mum-dating scene.

Time to mum strut.

Maybe I should stop wearing my new mum uniform of maternity tops and leggings as pants and get one of those competent-mum-puffa-jackets? Is my Mountain Buggy accurately representing my mum personality? Did that mum pushing the pram just look at me like she wanted to stop and chat? Oh my god she’s coming over!

Okay it wasn’t that intense but it was pretty shameless.

The good news is that I had some success and I’m happy to say that one year on I consider myself lucky to have a new network of mum comrades. HOORAY!

But to make life easier for every parent, grandparent or carer who ever finds themselves on the parental dating scene, I have created something that I consider to be a community service: